UK banks are less than half way through posting £240 billion ($398 billion) of losses on loans and securities, a reflection of the country’s economic weakness, according to Moody’s Investors Service.
British banks are likely to record losses of at least £130 billion, in addition to £110 billion lost since the beginning of the credit crisis in 2007, Moody’s said in a report on Monday.
The company expects the sustained weakness of the UK macroeconomic environment to feed through into higher loan arrears with ensuing pressure on profitability and capital, it said.
British taxpayers have provided about £1.4 trillion of support to banks, becoming the biggest shareholder of Royal Bank of Scotland Group and Lloyds Banking Group, while seeking to shore up capital eroded by writedowns. British banks have raised about £120 billion of capital from the beginning of the credit crisis to mid-2009, Moody’s said. “We have been underweight on the banks for some time”, said Dave Bradbury who helps manage $6 billion at Canada Life in London.
Agencies
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Check out the best IT employer: Dataquest-IDC survey
The average salary increase in the IT sector during 2009 was down at 1.4%, according to a Dataquest-IDC survey.
Employees under two years of experience earned a 2% increase in salary, while those between 2.1 to 5 years had their salaries cut by 7%. Those between 5.1 to 10 years got an average salary hike of 5% and those with over 10 years experience earned a 4% salary increase.
In the survey, HCL Infosystems emerged as the best employer in the IT industry, followed by iGate, Rolta, RMSI and SAS Institute. HCL jumped up two positions from last year, while iGate slipped one notch to No. 2.
The survey covered 200 IT companies of which 31 companies were short-listed for the final round. For the first time, India’s top four IT companies declined to take part “as layoffs and salary re-alignment leads to dip in IT employee morale”, the survey said. The top four IT firms employ about 40% of the IT professionals in the country.
Seven new entrants — R Systems (6), Perot Systems (7), Ingram Micro (11), Sify Technologies (13), Infogain (17), Unisys (18) and Novell (19) — made it to the Top 20 Best Employers in IT list.
The employee attrition rate came down to an average of 15%, from 18% last year. A majority of IT employees said they changed job for better salaries and compensation (53%), overseas postings (38%), better job security (18%), flexible working hours (18%) and training and development (9%). While the average retention rate, defined as percentage of employees retained out of the total employees as on March 31, 2008, improved to 85%, from 79% in 2008, Hexaware Technologies showed a remarkable retention score of 100.
The study also reveals that companies have become more transparent in their communication with employees giving them a sense of belonging. They have also gone ahead and adopted a higher degree of professionalism in their dealings with employees as well as customers or suppliers.
Another key finding is that more employees are satisfied with the interest shown by their companies as well as their immediate seniors in helping them strike a worklife balance compared to last year. The study reveals that there is a drastic fall in the number of people who feel that their job is secure within their company.
Agencies
Monday, September 14, 2009
StanChart to open KPO in Bangalore; Hire 2,000 staff
Foreign lender Standard Chartered Bank plans to hire around 2,000 employees in India in the current financial year, a top official said.
The bank currently has around 8,000 employees in the country.
The banking major has also plans to open an office of its knowledge process outsourcing network -- Scope International-- in Bangalore by October, StanChart's Chief Operating Officer, India and South Asia Sreeram Iyer told reporters here.
At present, Scope International has offices in Malaysia, China and Chennai.
It employs over 7,000 employees in its Chennai unit.
Agencies
The bank currently has around 8,000 employees in the country.
The banking major has also plans to open an office of its knowledge process outsourcing network -- Scope International-- in Bangalore by October, StanChart's Chief Operating Officer, India and South Asia Sreeram Iyer told reporters here.
At present, Scope International has offices in Malaysia, China and Chennai.
It employs over 7,000 employees in its Chennai unit.
Agencies
Major management shake-up at Intel Inc
Intel is expected to reveal a sweeping management change today, said the New York Times attributing to people briefed on the company. This management shake-up will witness its core chip Business Head Patrick Gelsinger leave the company after 30 years.
As Gelsinger departs, Sean Maloney, Intel's Head of Sales and Marketing, would take on an even larger role at the company. Maloney will look after the major chip businesses in Intel including its PC, graphics and server chips.
Also, Maloney, Intel's Sales Chief, is considered to be one of the possible successor to Intel CEO Paul Otellini. Another report from the Wall Street Journal, said 48-year-old Gelsinger would run computer-storage giant EMC's storage-products operations and some smaller software units.
Agencies
As Gelsinger departs, Sean Maloney, Intel's Head of Sales and Marketing, would take on an even larger role at the company. Maloney will look after the major chip businesses in Intel including its PC, graphics and server chips.
Also, Maloney, Intel's Sales Chief, is considered to be one of the possible successor to Intel CEO Paul Otellini. Another report from the Wall Street Journal, said 48-year-old Gelsinger would run computer-storage giant EMC's storage-products operations and some smaller software units.
Agencies
Indian IT firms see return of hiring, salary hikes
Many were predicting six months back that the Indian IT industry would be entering its twilight zone, but now there are indications that these predictions may go wrong. Several IT companies have restarted hiring and are giving salary hikes to their employees.
"That phase of drastic downturn is behind us," says S Ramadorai, CEO of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). "There's stability now. The deal pipeline is encouraging, but the time it takes to close a deal remains long. And many customers are yet to fully open up their IT budgets," Ramadorai added.
While IT majors like TCS, Wipro and Cognizant have started promotions and salary hikes, Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO and Managing Director of Infosys feels that things are looking better now, however the company prefers to wait and watch before giving any promotions or hikes, reports The Economic Times.
The recovery of the defamed Satyam Computer Services under the new owner Mahindra Satyam has also proved to be a boon for nearly 28,000 employees across all levels, with the restoration of the variable pay. The variable component is 10 percent at the entry level, 20 percent at the middle level and 30 percent at the senior management level. IT bellwether Wipro has lifted its freeze on hikes and promotions, at least for some employees.
Manpower supply company TeamLease, which saw its open positions drop significantly from 10,000 a month to 800 post-recession, has in the past couple of months seen those numbers rise to 3,500.
With the current trend companies have also started showing more confidence in the Indian market. Information infrastructure company, EMC has announced that it will invest $1.5 billion in India over the next five years, a level of investment from a single company that the sector has not seen in close to two years. Partha Iyengar, Regional Research Director in Gartner India, says the number of calls the company gets from customers for directions and consulting has gone up sharply in the last 3-4 months.
The Indian IT industry was one of the worst hit by the recession on account of its dependence on international markets - especially the U.S. and European markets. The freeze on IT budgets by companies around the world meant that new orders dried up. Industry association Nasscom initially forecast that IT exports would grow by 22-24 percent in 2008-09, but as the recession deepened, this was revised down to 16 percent. For this fiscal, the association has projected a 4-7 percent growth to $48-50 billion.
Agencies
"That phase of drastic downturn is behind us," says S Ramadorai, CEO of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). "There's stability now. The deal pipeline is encouraging, but the time it takes to close a deal remains long. And many customers are yet to fully open up their IT budgets," Ramadorai added.
While IT majors like TCS, Wipro and Cognizant have started promotions and salary hikes, Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO and Managing Director of Infosys feels that things are looking better now, however the company prefers to wait and watch before giving any promotions or hikes, reports The Economic Times.
The recovery of the defamed Satyam Computer Services under the new owner Mahindra Satyam has also proved to be a boon for nearly 28,000 employees across all levels, with the restoration of the variable pay. The variable component is 10 percent at the entry level, 20 percent at the middle level and 30 percent at the senior management level. IT bellwether Wipro has lifted its freeze on hikes and promotions, at least for some employees.
Manpower supply company TeamLease, which saw its open positions drop significantly from 10,000 a month to 800 post-recession, has in the past couple of months seen those numbers rise to 3,500.
With the current trend companies have also started showing more confidence in the Indian market. Information infrastructure company, EMC has announced that it will invest $1.5 billion in India over the next five years, a level of investment from a single company that the sector has not seen in close to two years. Partha Iyengar, Regional Research Director in Gartner India, says the number of calls the company gets from customers for directions and consulting has gone up sharply in the last 3-4 months.
The Indian IT industry was one of the worst hit by the recession on account of its dependence on international markets - especially the U.S. and European markets. The freeze on IT budgets by companies around the world meant that new orders dried up. Industry association Nasscom initially forecast that IT exports would grow by 22-24 percent in 2008-09, but as the recession deepened, this was revised down to 16 percent. For this fiscal, the association has projected a 4-7 percent growth to $48-50 billion.
Agencies
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Cisco expands campus; Likely to increase headcount
Cisco will be adding two additional office blocks totaling a floor area of 70,000 square feet. The expansion will happen around its 2.1 million square feet campus at Cessna Business Park on the Outer Ring Road in Bangalore.
This expansion might be by far the biggest in the commercial space market in this region in the last one year. Although Cisco declined to comment on the expansion, it issued a statement saying, "We have designated Bangalore as our Globalization Centre East and indicated that we will have 10,000-12,000 employees based here over the next three to five years. The idea is for 20 percent of the top talent in Cisco to be based here." At present, Cisco has 4000 Indian employees.
Agencies
This expansion might be by far the biggest in the commercial space market in this region in the last one year. Although Cisco declined to comment on the expansion, it issued a statement saying, "We have designated Bangalore as our Globalization Centre East and indicated that we will have 10,000-12,000 employees based here over the next three to five years. The idea is for 20 percent of the top talent in Cisco to be based here." At present, Cisco has 4000 Indian employees.
Agencies
Motorola unveils Cliq smartphones
Motorola introduced its first smartphone based on Google's Android software, in a move that's key to the company's goal of regaining its place among the world's top cellphone manufacturers.
The device, dubbed the Cliq, will first be made available later this year in the US through T-Mobile. The touch-screen phone will run a new service from Motorola called MotoBlur, which synchronises all user messages and contacts, Motorola chief executive Sanjay Jha said at the Mobilize conference in San Francisco.
"MotoBlur makes text, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter feeds and photos from sources like MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo and corporate e-mail appear in a single stream and sync them together with no different logins," Jha said. "This means you can focus on what people have said instead of how and where they said it."
The Cliq will feature a full, slide-out keyboard, a 5-megapixel camera and access to all the Google programmes and applications available for the company's Android platform.
The phone will be called the Dext in markets outside the U.S. and will launch in France, Britain and Latin America later in the year, Jha said. No pricing was available for the device.
Analysts said the integration of social networking into phones could give Motorola and other manufacturers a foot in the door in their battle to challenge the iPhone as the world's dominant smartphone.
Motorola has been especially hard hit by the move to smartphones, selling just 18.8 million handsets in the most recent quarter, down from 28.1 million a year ago. Earlier this decade, the company's Razr was the world's most popular cellphone.
Jha said that Motorola was now refocused on producing cutting-edge mobile devices. He said the Cliq was crucial to the company's recovery.
"It's a very important starting point for us," Jha said. "I see smartphones as the future of computing. If it doesn't fit in your pocket, I don't think it's going to be a relevant device."
Agencies
The device, dubbed the Cliq, will first be made available later this year in the US through T-Mobile. The touch-screen phone will run a new service from Motorola called MotoBlur, which synchronises all user messages and contacts, Motorola chief executive Sanjay Jha said at the Mobilize conference in San Francisco.
"MotoBlur makes text, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter feeds and photos from sources like MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo and corporate e-mail appear in a single stream and sync them together with no different logins," Jha said. "This means you can focus on what people have said instead of how and where they said it."
The Cliq will feature a full, slide-out keyboard, a 5-megapixel camera and access to all the Google programmes and applications available for the company's Android platform.
The phone will be called the Dext in markets outside the U.S. and will launch in France, Britain and Latin America later in the year, Jha said. No pricing was available for the device.
Analysts said the integration of social networking into phones could give Motorola and other manufacturers a foot in the door in their battle to challenge the iPhone as the world's dominant smartphone.
Motorola has been especially hard hit by the move to smartphones, selling just 18.8 million handsets in the most recent quarter, down from 28.1 million a year ago. Earlier this decade, the company's Razr was the world's most popular cellphone.
Jha said that Motorola was now refocused on producing cutting-edge mobile devices. He said the Cliq was crucial to the company's recovery.
"It's a very important starting point for us," Jha said. "I see smartphones as the future of computing. If it doesn't fit in your pocket, I don't think it's going to be a relevant device."
Agencies
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